Scandal will trail NHL-ers to Turin
TURIN - The 20th Winter Olympic Games begin tonight with flames shooting out the back of racing helmets, with a modern-day Dante reciting his poetry, with Venus on the half shell, a Boticelli vision come to life. There will be an enormous mosh pit and disembodied legs, a bizarre sight that the art director is calling "synchronized swimming for ice lake."
"I think it will be big surprise," Marco Balich said of the legs.
This will be another loopy Opening Ceremony, in other words, and the Turin Organizing Committee is hopeful the ceremony's theme of "energy, passion, speed and style" will carry the next 16 days. But while organizers put on their dreamiest Italian face, they will be awakened soon enough by a cold slap in the face.
The NHL Dream Teams arrive on Tuesday, bloated with fresh scandal, prepared to stomp out all torches in their way. Organizers were able to reroute the Olympic flame yesterday in Turin when hundreds of vocal, political protestors blocked its path. They will find it tougher to divert the headlines floating their way from across the Atlantic.
The Dream Teamers suddenly have become everybody's nightmare, only in a different way than ever expected. Nobody saw illegal gambling coming. It's not in the vocabulary of Olympic shame quite yet. Drugs and judging have been the scandal du quadrennium for as long as memory serves, and in Europe gambling on sports is as commonplace as leisurely, late-evening dinners.
If you want to place a bet on anything from football to skiing, just walk to the nearest plaza and plunk down your Euros. North Americans have always thought differently on this front, and maybe that explains why so many more soccer referees are nabbed with bribes in Europe than they are in the NBA or NFL.
At the moment, no international official is saying much about the trouble brewing, because this is unknown ground and too few facts are clear.
Rick Tocchet is in trouble, we know that. The Gretzkys are involved, in one fashion or another, and that is more important.
Wayne Gretzky is still set on going to Turin, even if he is now as much of a disturbance as he is a vaunted leader. By the time he arrives, there may be more names involved, maybe even a couple Dream Teamers. But Gretzky can't step away from his team, from these Olympics. It would kill him, implicate The Great One by his absence.
If anybody should understand the trouble brewing, it is the Canadians and Americans. Still, they don't seem to fully comprehend what is about to happen. Dick Pound, a Canadian and president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, was still blasting the NHL yesterday over its drug-testing programs. Old news. The U.S. Olympic Committee, too, is confused on this one.
What are the rules? What are the infractions?
"I'm always concerned that something not specific to the team might distract the athletes," said Jim Scherr, chief executive of the USOC. "But it is not something that happened while our athletes were involved in the Games. Sometimes controversy makes more people watch the Olympics."
Scherr said the USOC will monitor the situation, talk with sports officials. He is more concerned right now with matching America's 34 medals from Salt Lake City than he is with a murky gambling ring.
"We'll deal with USA Hockey and the NHL, not with the New Jersey police," Scherr said.
Back in 1998, when the NHL first joined the fun, there was great concern the players would embarrass themselves by testing positive for ephedrine or some other performance-enhancing drug. They threw furniture out the dorm window in Nagano, but they were clean as a referee's whistle.
In 2002, the Dream Teams were now part of the family, and their hockey was truly special, inspired. When Canada won the gold medal, guided by the steady hand of Gretzky, a national icon, the event truly had come home to roost.
Now, though, it is Gretzky as Hannibal the invader, leading those elephants over the Alps. Will people be reading about Chad Hedrick, or about Jaromir Jagr's history of gambling debts? Will they be hearing more about Tanith Belbin, or about Gretzky's wife, Janet Jones?
For tonight, enjoy the techno-symphonic music, the golden anvil bursting into yet more flames.
Two thousand athletes will smile and wave at you. The Olympics are starting. They have about four days to themselves, before the planes land from the west.
Daily News, L.P.
TURIN - The 20th Winter Olympic Games begin tonight with flames shooting out the back of racing helmets, with a modern-day Dante reciting his poetry, with Venus on the half shell, a Boticelli vision come to life. There will be an enormous mosh pit and disembodied legs, a bizarre sight that the art director is calling "synchronized swimming for ice lake."
"I think it will be big surprise," Marco Balich said of the legs.
This will be another loopy Opening Ceremony, in other words, and the Turin Organizing Committee is hopeful the ceremony's theme of "energy, passion, speed and style" will carry the next 16 days. But while organizers put on their dreamiest Italian face, they will be awakened soon enough by a cold slap in the face.
The NHL Dream Teams arrive on Tuesday, bloated with fresh scandal, prepared to stomp out all torches in their way. Organizers were able to reroute the Olympic flame yesterday in Turin when hundreds of vocal, political protestors blocked its path. They will find it tougher to divert the headlines floating their way from across the Atlantic.
The Dream Teamers suddenly have become everybody's nightmare, only in a different way than ever expected. Nobody saw illegal gambling coming. It's not in the vocabulary of Olympic shame quite yet. Drugs and judging have been the scandal du quadrennium for as long as memory serves, and in Europe gambling on sports is as commonplace as leisurely, late-evening dinners.
If you want to place a bet on anything from football to skiing, just walk to the nearest plaza and plunk down your Euros. North Americans have always thought differently on this front, and maybe that explains why so many more soccer referees are nabbed with bribes in Europe than they are in the NBA or NFL.
At the moment, no international official is saying much about the trouble brewing, because this is unknown ground and too few facts are clear.
Rick Tocchet is in trouble, we know that. The Gretzkys are involved, in one fashion or another, and that is more important.
Wayne Gretzky is still set on going to Turin, even if he is now as much of a disturbance as he is a vaunted leader. By the time he arrives, there may be more names involved, maybe even a couple Dream Teamers. But Gretzky can't step away from his team, from these Olympics. It would kill him, implicate The Great One by his absence.
If anybody should understand the trouble brewing, it is the Canadians and Americans. Still, they don't seem to fully comprehend what is about to happen. Dick Pound, a Canadian and president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, was still blasting the NHL yesterday over its drug-testing programs. Old news. The U.S. Olympic Committee, too, is confused on this one.
What are the rules? What are the infractions?
"I'm always concerned that something not specific to the team might distract the athletes," said Jim Scherr, chief executive of the USOC. "But it is not something that happened while our athletes were involved in the Games. Sometimes controversy makes more people watch the Olympics."
Scherr said the USOC will monitor the situation, talk with sports officials. He is more concerned right now with matching America's 34 medals from Salt Lake City than he is with a murky gambling ring.
"We'll deal with USA Hockey and the NHL, not with the New Jersey police," Scherr said.
Back in 1998, when the NHL first joined the fun, there was great concern the players would embarrass themselves by testing positive for ephedrine or some other performance-enhancing drug. They threw furniture out the dorm window in Nagano, but they were clean as a referee's whistle.
In 2002, the Dream Teams were now part of the family, and their hockey was truly special, inspired. When Canada won the gold medal, guided by the steady hand of Gretzky, a national icon, the event truly had come home to roost.
Now, though, it is Gretzky as Hannibal the invader, leading those elephants over the Alps. Will people be reading about Chad Hedrick, or about Jaromir Jagr's history of gambling debts? Will they be hearing more about Tanith Belbin, or about Gretzky's wife, Janet Jones?
For tonight, enjoy the techno-symphonic music, the golden anvil bursting into yet more flames.
Two thousand athletes will smile and wave at you. The Olympics are starting. They have about four days to themselves, before the planes land from the west.
Daily News, L.P.